A History of Opera

by Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker (Norton)

Opera, defined here as “a type of theatre in which most or all of the characters sing most or all of the time,” spans roughly four hundred years—from its beginnings, as a form of Italian pastoral drama, in the fifteenth century, all the way to contemporary works such as those of John Adams. The authors of this history wonder how opera transcends its significant dramatic flaws—the absurdity of a tuberculous character singing an aria, for instance—and why new works have “dried to a trickle.” Though the book’s answers to such questions are often less than satisfying, the account of opera’s evolution and of the great composers who shaped it brims with insight, and polemic. The authors lament that a modern repertory dominated by “certain kinds of now-ancient opera” has created an atmosphere hostile to the cultivation and reception of new works. ♦

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